Explaining ... to Americans
Created | Updated Feb 9, 2006
My Irish husband Tony and I have recently moved to Birmingham, UK and I am writing a weekly blog explaining Europe to my fellow Americans. This is the entry about Scotland. You can find my other blogs about Britain at www.gypsyteacher.blogspot.com.
Explaining Scotland to Americans
On my second trip to the Dublin Literary Pub Crawl, I was nursing a cider in the Palace pub in Temple Bar, listening to my fellow tourists. There was a university-aged woman standing in front of me, chatting normally, except that the sounds coming out of her mouth, although recognisable as English, were absolutely bizarre. I recognised them only from bad comedy routines. She was a Scot. And, it slowly occurred to me, there is a whole country that talks that way. Oh.
This is a revelation to us Americans. Other countries have world leaders who appear on CNN. English accents we hear. Irish accents we hear. Even Welsh accents, sometimes. Scottish accents? Billy Connolly, Sheena Easton, that's it. And I hate to be the one to tell you, but very few Americans have even heard them. Sean Connery? Please. Robin Williams in Mrs Doubtfire? A fake.
Having resigned myself to whole parts of the globe getting through their days without my being able to understand a word they said, 'separated by a common language', my next brush with Scotland came when my husband Tony and I did the B&B route. My ear started to adapt; theirs didn't. I let him do the telephoning for rooms, directions, etc. They understood Irish better than they understood Pittsburgh.
In my college days, before I travelled, I got into a fight about whether Wales was a separate country:
Q: Is it?
Me: Yes. And so are England, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Together they make up the 'United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland'.
Q: So they each have a separate seat in the United Nations?
Me: Well, no. The UK has a seat. But at one time they each had their own parliament, but then they didn't. And now they do again. Except Wales, which has an assembly.
Q: So who's in charge?
Me: Good question. They're not a simple people. For some things, Parliament — the House of Commons and the House of Lords — is in charge. But some things like education and health services have 'devolved' to Scotland. And eventually Northern Ireland will be allowed to make their own laws again, but they still have to learn how to play with others.
Q: So who decides on education and health for Wales?
Me: Parliament. A lot of the bills I hear discussed apply to 'England and Wales', but not the other two.
Q: What about money? They all use the pound, don't they? Or is it the euro?
GT: No euros. Except in real touristy places. It's the pound and it won't change in my lifetime. But there are also Scottish pounds and Northern Ireland pounds. In fact, when the IRA knocked off that bank in Belfast, they got away with Northern Ireland notes. They weren't going to get very far with those.
Q: So you can't use them anywhere else?
GT: You can. But on our recent excursion to Edinburgh, I was given a Scottish 20-pound note and had visions of arguing with some English-nationalist taxi driver when we got home to Birmingham. So I exchanged it for a proper English pound.
Q: You went to Scotland?
GT: Taking advantage of Tony's two days off and my between-semesters downtime, we took off for Edinburgh in January. Five hours on the train — why drive? And we got a great deal on a hotel right in the city centre. On our previous Scotland sojourn almost 13 years ago, we belatedly realised that we hadn't planned nearly enough time in Edinburgh. What a spectacular city! My concern was that since then it may have turned in to a Harry Potter theme park. Even I wanted to see the restaurant where JK Rowling had sat writing the original, nursing a tea.
Perhaps I'm the only one, though, because we saw no signs of Harry or his creator. The city had the same charm and wow factor that it held before. On our first afternoon we hiked up to the castle in pissing rain, but it was too late in the day to take the tour. Aha! To our right, the whisky Centre. Perfect. We got our souvenir whisky taste and glasses and then proceeded on their tour which resembled a mini-whisky theme park, complete with ride in a barrel car through years of Scottish history. The young female tour guide knew her part, but halfway through her spiel Tony asked me, 'Are you understanding her?' 'I'm batting about .100,' I confessed. 'I got "malt", "whisky", "water", and "follow me".' However, there are native Pittsburghers who I can't understand either.
The introductory video included an American tourist embarrassingly confessing to the barkeep that his ancestors had worked in a distillery over a hundred years ago. I thought they were going to show the American chugging the whisky, but they gave us more credit than that. He sipped.
After buying whisky mustard and hot toddy mix, we strolled down the Royal Mile on wet streets, had a lovely dinner at the hotel, and nodded off to the Mancunian accents of Shameless on telly. I had told Tony that I wouldn't want to live in Edinburgh. The city is so special, I prefer to treat it as a gem rather than a 'quotidian' experience. How sad it would be to walk down Prince's Street every day and take for granted the granite mound and castle looming over you. But once we rode the bus through the neighbourhoods away from the city centre and closer to Ocean Terminal, down by the water, I decided, that yes, we could live there. Well, in summer.
And the accents were more understandable to me now. Of course, we were waited on by a New Yorker, an Indian and a Dub, as well as Scots. The effect of globalisation is to spread those accents around as well as making American ears more attuned.
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